Backed by a group of Irish student singers, The Edge covered Leonard Cohen's "If It Be Your Will" along with "Yahweh" and "Ordinary Love."

The Irish rocker even dedicated his performance of U2's "Walk On" to Pope Francis, saying he was "doing an amazing job, long may he continue."

The student choir, led by Dawn Kenny, was part of Music Generation, an initiative - backed by U2 - involving philanthropic, government, and local community support, which provides music tuition for young Irish musicians.

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Yet as the group sat amid Renaissance frescoes by the likes of Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Perugino — undisputedly one of the high points of papal art patronage — not all of those present had a traditional religious bent.

Among them was the American artist Andres Serrano, whose photograph "Piss Christ," an image of a plastic crucifix submerged in a tank full of urine, was considered blasphemous when it debuted in 1987.

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Same goes for all of the audiobooks and podcasts you've downloaded to cure your boredom.

Luckily, there are countless virtual tours of museums, theme parks, and gardens to enjoy in these times.

St Peter's Square might be empty, but whether you're looking for a way to keep your kids busy or you simply want to safely get your culture fix, start up your computer and click here to take a tour the Vatican's Museums.

Perhaps start with a 360º view of Michelangelo's masterpiece, the Sistine Chapel.

While the painted ceiling is a showstopper, each chapel wall explores a different aspect of the Christian faith journey: the stories of Moses, Christ, and the Popes throughout history.

Then work your way through the remaining popular Vatican museums:

• Pio Clementino Museum,
• Chiaramonti Museum,
• New Wing,
• Raphael's Rooms,
• Niccoline Chapel, and
• Room of the Chiaroscuri.

Source: Good House Keeping

New photographs of the Sistine Chapel's artworks have been presented in a massive book that shows them in 1:1 ratio.

In other words, the photos show the artworks as the actual size Michelangelo painted them.

The book will enable art lovers to have a close-up view of the masterpieces for the first time. Read more

It's interesting how we can become used to the old and soiled. I suspect there is a parable somewhere in that.

If we visit the Sistine chapel today, we'll see a ceiling of vivid scripture as Michelangelo painted it. With hundreds of other visitors, we'll walk with heads upturned in awe.

There is one place where everyone stops. It's under the picture of The Creation of Adam.

God is leaning towards Adam who appears to have fallen backwards, his arm extended as though he's trying to return to God. His finger is almost touching God's, but we get the feeling this won't happen. We notice that both Adam and God are strongly muscled, a reminder that Michelangelo was first and foremost a sculptor.

We stand still, gazing at the painting. There is much in the detail that is alive with expression. It claims our eyes and our hearts.

Why does this particular picture hold our attention? What did Michelangelo intend us to see?

Over the centuries there have been many theories about The Creation of Adam, people interpreting body language and background as they saw it. The cloak-like shape behind God, for example: does it represent an unfolding universe? Is it formed like a uterus to suggest the birthing of creation? Or does that shape resemble a brain and wisdom? All of these have been historical interpretations.

For some of us, though, the potent image is the gap between God's finger and Adam's finger. God is leaning forward as a father reaches for his child, but Adam is helpless and falling away.

We can see much pathos in that gap between the fingers. It is a space of loss and yearning, and we feel it deeply. It belongs to us, and no effort on our part is going to close it.

What then, fills the gap?

I believe Michelangelo tells us in another part of the painting. The answer is beneath God's left arm and hand. There is a young woman there, secure in the crook of God's elbow. Tradition says this is Eve waiting to evolve from Adam's side, but if we look closely, we see the woman has the same face as that of Michelangelo's sculpture of The Pieta. The woman is Mary.

Further along, God's left hand rests on a baby. Both the woman and the baby are in subdued colour, suggesting they have not yet come into incarnation.

The artist is telling us who closes the gap between us and our Creator.

It is the Beloved. It is Christ Jesus.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

The replica, which has been approved by the Vatican, is open to the public until June 30.

The replica was created using more than 2.7 million photographs printed on cloth and hung from a metal framework.

The replica includes the frescos of Michelangelo, and sculptures and decorations also adorn the model.

Continue reading

The audit will look at financial investments, real estate and cultural assets.

It will be performed by Price Waterhouse Coopers and will start immediately, said Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ.

Assets that would never be sold and thus have no market value - including St Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel and priceless art treasures by Michelangelo - will be included in financial statements.

But the Vatican is still considering whether and how they should be valued.

The decision to work with one of the world's top four auditors continued "the implementation of new financial management policies and practices in line with international standards", Fr Lombardi said.

A Vatican financial statement this year revealed that the city-state's departments had stashed away 1.1 billion euros (US$1.2 billion) of assets that were not declared on any balance sheet.

The head of the economy secretariat, Cardinal George Pell, said last year that departments had "tucked away" millions of euros and followed "long-established patterns" in managing their affairs without reporting to any central accounting office.

At Cardinal Pell's suggestion, Pope Francis has set up a "Working Party for the Economic Future", which brings together the Secretariat of State, the Vatican Bank and other agencies.

The Pope has asked that group to address "the financial challenges and identify how resources can be devoted to the many good works of the Church, especially supporting the poor and vulnerable", said Danny Casey from the Secretariat for the Economy.

The working group will study measures to cut costs and raise revenue as part of a long-term financial plan, Bloomberg reported.

"This will include comparing actual expenditure against budgets at a consolidated level, which is a new initiative," Mr Casey said.

The working party held its first meeting last month.

Last year, Cardinal Pell said the Vatican's total assets were worth more than US$3billion.

Sources

• Bloomberg
• Reuters
• Image: Historvius

Porsche enthusiasts paid 5000 Euros each for a multi-day tour of Rome, which included an exclusive concert inside the Sistine Chapel and a dinner in the Vatican Museums on Saturday.

The "Art for Charity" initiative, aimed at big companies, aims to support the charitable activities of the Pope.

Vatican Museums' managing director Msgr Paolo Nicolini rejected suggestions the chapel was available for rent.

"The Sistine Chapel can never be rented because it is not a commercial place," he told reporters.

Nearly 6 million people a year visit the chapel, with as many as 20,000 in a single day.

The Vatican has been undertaking a major refurbishment of the chapel's air conditioning and lighting system.

Continue reading

Since Pope Francis was elected in March, 2013, more than 5.5 million people have been through the chapel.

This amounts to 20,000 a day and 30,000 on Sundays, when entrance is free.

But the perspiration and breath from so many people threatens the survival of masterpieces by Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Pinturicchio, Perugino and, most famously, Michelangelo.

Vatican authorities refuse to reduce the number of visitors, as they insist the faithful have a right to see the room where cardinals have elected new popes for more than five centuries.

The present air-conditioning system, installed in the mid-1990s, was designed for only half the current number of visitors.

So the Vatican is installing a powerful new system which is hoped to be operative in October.

A new energy-efficient LED lighting system is also being installed.

An extensive restoration on the Sistine Chapel was completed in 1994.

Continue reading

Born in 1475 to an impoverished but aristocratic family in Caprese, a hillside town near Florence, Michelangelo Buonarroti grew up with an innate sense of pride, which as he aged, would feed his volatile temperament. When he failed to excel at school, his father apprenticed him to Domenico Ghirlandaio, a Florentine frescoist. Cocky from the start, the 13-year-old Michelangelo succeeded in irritating his fellow apprentices, one so badly that the boy punched him in the face, breaking his nose. But in Ghirlandaio's workshop, Michelangelo learned to paint; in doing so, he caught the attention of Florence's storied Medici family, whose wealth and political standing would soon put Michelangelo on the map as an artist and, in 1496, chart his course south, to Rome.

"It's almost as if Michelangelo goes from zero to 65 miles per hour in a second or two," says William Wallace, an art history professor at Washington University in Saint Louis. "He was 21 when he arrived in Rome, and he hadn't accomplished a lot yet. He went from relatively small works to suddenly creating the Pietà."

It was the Rome Pietà (1499), a sculpture of the Virgin Mary cradling the body of her son Jesus in her lap, and the artist's next creation in Florence, the nearly 17-foot-tall figure of David (1504) that earned Michelangelo the respect of the greatest art patron of his age: Pope Julius II. The 10-year partnership between the two men was both a meeting of the minds and a constant war of egos and would result in some of the Italian Renaissance's greatest works of art and architecture, the Sistine Chapel among them. Continue reading

Sources

• Smithsonian.com
• Image: Sistine Chapel

"I think it all came together in an extraordinary fashion," Chicago Cardinal Francis George told the Chicago Tribune.

George said Bergoglio's name had not surfaced as an option in the week of closed-door discussions among the cardinals before the conclave, and Bergoglio had also dropped off the radar of most journalists. He was 76, and many cardinals said they would not vote for someone older than 70. Bergoglio was also reportedly the runner-up to Benedict in the conclave of 2005 and unlikely to return as a candidate.

"I wouldn't have expected it to happen either this fast or even the way it developed in terms of the choices available to us," George said. "I believe the Holy Spirit makes clear which way we should go. And we went that way very quickly."

The Holy Spirit, yes, but other forces also contributed to the unexpected result. And despite the cone of silence that is supposed to remain over all proceedings inside the conclave, leaks in the Italian press and interviews with various cardinal electors have begun to give a clearer picture of how this 28-hour conclave unfolded.

What happened, in short, is that during the first "shake out" ballot Tuesday evening, Bergoglio's name drew a surprising number of votes, suddenly putting him out there as a potential candidate.

"Cardinal Bergoglio wouldn't have become pope in the fifth ballot if he had not been a really strong contender for the papacy from the beginning," Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn told reporters.

Until then, the field had been considered fairly open, with two main camps each looking for a champion: There were those who wanted a pope who would reform the Roman Curia, the papal bureaucracy — and preferably someone from outside Europe to represent the church's demographic shift to the Southern Hemisphere. Then there were the electors who wanted to defend the Curia, and they were joined by some who also hoped to keep the papacy in Europe, or even return it to an Italian.

The "reform" camp had no clear champion but a dozen or more possibilities. They reportedly wanted someone from outside Europe, in particular a Latin American, but weren't sure who.

The Roman camp, on the other hand, had apparently begun to lean toward Brazilian Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer, who was born of German immigrant parents and had long experience in the Curia. That made him a plausible Southern Hemisphere candidate, but one with strong European and curial ties.

In the days leading up to the conclave, however, Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan had increasingly emerged as an apparent front-runner because he was seen as an Italian who could fix the Vatican, a combination some said could attract votes from both camps.

Throughout this wrangling, Bergoglio had maintained a low profile, which was in keeping with his reputation for humility and holiness, and several electors said they found that refreshing. Continue reading

He had initiated a "Year of Faith" in October 2012; it would have made sense to leave his resignation till the end of the year of Faith.

He has completed two encyclicals - on Charity and on Hope. He was currently writing one on Faith. It might have seemed reasonable to finish this third encyclical before resigning.

But in the light of his recent speeches and homilies in which he calls the Church - from top to bottom - to a radical change of heart, it now seems obvious why he has selected the beginning of Lent to make his announcement, initiating the 40 days of penance and reflection on the Word of God.

A silence is already descending on the Vatican as he and the Cardinals of the Curia begin their annual retreat.

Benedict will make only two more public appearances: next Sunday at the traditional noon Angelus meeting, and on Wednesday February 27^th, when he will hold his final public meeting in St Peter's Square.

Since there is no funeral service to be held, nor any mandatory days of mourning before the Conclave, the lapse of time between Benedict's resignation and the election of a new pope can be short.

The 117 voting Cardinals will begin their pre-Conclave meetings soon after February 28^th. The Conclave could well start by March 10^th.

Though he will take no part in these general meetings, or in the Conclave itself, Benedict has already, through his homilies and speeches, sent out a message to the Conclave: no self-seeking, no divisions or cabals, and no splits within the Sistine Chapel!

Source:

• Fr. Craig Larkin s.m., who is based in Rome, writing exclusively for CathNews NZ Pacific

The Sistine Chapel ceiling celebrated its 500th anniversary on Wednesday.

Pope Benedict XVI marked the anniversary of what he dubbed as the "liturgical classroom" with vespers. He said "the works of art which decorate [the chapel], especially the frescos, find in the liturgy … their living environment."

On October 31, 1512, only 20 years after the discovery of America, Pope Julius II said an evening vespers service to inaugurate the room where Michelangelo toiled for four years, much of it on his back, to finish his ceiling frescoes.

The frescoes immediately became the talk of the town and have since become the talk of the world.

With mass tourism growing, however, critics warned that the 500-year old work of art may be in danger.

Some five million people visit the chapel every year, or as many as 20,000 a day in summer.

Italian literary critic Pietro Citati last month wrote an open letter in a major Italian newspaper denouncing the behaviour of crowds visiting the place.

He said tourists "resemble drunken herds" as they unwittingly risked damaging the frescoes with their breath, their perspiration, the dust on their shoes and their body heat.

The atmosphere, Citati wrote, was anything but contemplative as the tourists ignored the Vatican's requests for silence, composure and a ban on taking photographs.

Antonio Paolucci, the director of the Vatican Museums, however, said in a Reuters report that he did not foresee limiting the number of visitors "in the short and medium term."

He added, however, that the museums might not have any choice after that.

"Pressure caused by humans such as dust introduced, the humidity of bodies, carbon dioxide produced by perspiration can cause unease for the visitors, and in the long run, possible damage to the paintings," Paolucci said in an article in the Vatican newspaper.

"We might limit the access, putting a cap on the number (of visitors). We will do this if tourism grows beyond the limits of reasonable tolerance and if we are not able to respond adequately to the problem," he said.

Under the current system, visitors to the Vatican museums can either book times to enter or wait in long queues outside, but there is no cap on the total daily number.

In 1994, at the end of a 14-year restoration project, technicians installed an elaborate system of dehumidifiers, air conditioning, filters and micro-climate controls in the chapel.

But the number of visitors has grown in the past 18 years, putting the system under stress.

Sources

• Reuters
• Catholic News Service
• CNA/EWTN News
• Image: CNA